Image
gallery:Further
macro and microscopic images taken with an Olympus D-360L digital camera

by
David Young, Iowa City, USA

The macro images were taken with an Olympus
D-360L digital camera with a supplementary lens attached, as described
in an earlier Micscape image gallery.

The micrographs were taken with my newly
acquired American Optical microscope and the Olympus digicam using settings
described here. The AO microscope
has given me the opportunity to try darkfield using home page patch stops
as described by contributors
to Micscape.

(Editor's note: to fit in
the web page, the author's master images have been resizedand sharpened a little
to correct softness introduced by resizing.)

A spring flower in the violet
family.

A moss leaf magnified 970x.
I used Paintshop Pro to enhance the color saturation. (I basically
made a duplicate layer, then applied the 'burn' function.)

Lichen growing on a tree outside
my home.

Jaw from the shed skin of
a wolf spider, ca. 100x.

A thief ant, magnified 100x,
(10x objective with a 10x eyepiece.) It is my first successful attempt
at darkfield. The ant was collected in April of this year and was mounted
using nail polish. The image has been untouched save for cropping. To set
the scope up for darkfield, I simply cut a dark disk out of cardboard and
inserted below the stage of my AO microscope.The ant is a close relative
of the infamous fire ant and belongs to the same genus. But is only about
1 mm long and is too small to sting through human skin. The common name
is thief ant because it often builds its nest alongside that of another
species, from which it pillages food and brood.

The sting from a red ant,
Myrmica
species. It was taken using darkfield and is magnified 100x.

The abdomen of a thief ant.
All the internal organs are visible; the crop, stomach and many of the
glands. You can even see what appears to be strands of tissue securing
the internal organs to the outside of the ant's body.

The thief ant under crossed
polars to clearly reveal the muscles which are highlighted under polarized
light.